US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is due to visit India next week, but he will not set foot in the capital, New Delhi.
Instead, on Monday, Rubio will speak with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar in Mumbai, India’s financial hub, and then visit an oil refinery in Jamnagar, in the western state of Gujarat, according to a statement from the U.S. State Department.
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His itinerary sparked a political storm after the US ambassador to India said Washington expected Jaishankar to travel to meet Rubio, prompting opposition leaders to accuse the government of allowing India’s top diplomat to be “summoned” to its home soil.
This dispute comes as relations between the two countries are tense over trade, customs duties and India’s purchases of Russian oil.
So why is Rubio avoiding New Delhi, and why has it caused such upheaval? Here’s what you need to know:
What is Rubio doing in India?
He plans to discuss trade, energy and investment.
Rubio arrives Sunday from Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where he met with five Central Asian states at the C5+1 summit.
In India, he is expected to meet with senior officials to discuss the U.S.-India strategic partnership and energy cooperation and speak with business leaders, the State Department said.
Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal appeared to confirm the agenda, saying Friday that the Mumbai talks would focus on energy, trade and investment, defense and critical and emerging technologies.
In Jamnagar, Rubio is scheduled to visit the world’s largest single-site refinery, operated by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, and attend a reception hosted by the Ambani family, according to The Hindu newspaper.
Why isn’t Rubio going to New Delhi?
No official reason was given.
Rubio was in the Indian capital in May for a meeting of foreign ministers from the Quad countries, a group made up of the United States, India, Japan and Australia.
The State Department has focused its upcoming trip on energy and investment, and the second stop on Rubio’s India visit, Jamnagar, is one of the most important energy centers in the world.
The visit also comes as fuel prices rise in the United States ahead of next month’s midterm elections.
Reliance, an energy, retail and telecommunications conglomerate, is also at the center of Washington’s broader oil diplomacy.
Business Standard, an Indian financial daily, said the Jamnagar shutdown was significant because Reliance is the largest buyer of Venezuelan crude oil after the United States, at a time when Washington is urging India to buy more.
Since U.S. forces seized Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January and took critical control of the country’s oil industry, the U.S. government has marketed Venezuelan oil to foreign buyers.
Reliance is also investing in a new refinery in Texas, the first to be built in the United States in 50 years, which Trump hailed as a $300 billion deal when he announced it in March, Business Standard reported.
What did the US ambassador say and why did it cause an upheaval?
Speaking at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in New Delhi on Thursday, U.S. Ambassador to India Sergio Gor said Rubio would meet Indian government officials in Mumbai and that Washington “expected” Jaishankar and others from New Delhi to travel there to see him.
However, earlier in the week, Jaiswal had not confirmed the trip or explained why Rubio was leaving New Delhi, telling reporters that the Indian government would announce it “at the appropriate time”, The Hindu newspaper reported.
Jairam Ramesh, general secretary of the opposition Indian National Congress party, wrote on X that the ambassador’s statement was “quite extraordinary.”
Rahul Gandhi, leader of the opposition in the lower house of Parliament, also commented on X, writing on Friday that Rubio had “summoned his employee to Mumbai.”
Congress MP Pawan Khera went further.
“A foreign government summoning the Indian Foreign Minister to Indian soil is a new low, even by Modi government standards,” he wrote on X, referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Why are US-India relations strained?
Mainly because of Trump’s tariffs and Russian oil.
In August last year, after a series of trade talks failed, the United States imposed 50% tariffs on most Indian goods. However, under a framework agreed between the two sides in February, this rate fell to 18 percent.
Since then, negotiations have been at a standstill.
This month, Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said talks were “at a standstill,” according to The Hindu.
On Thursday, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal said the “first tranche” of the deal was in its final stages, but that India would not sign it until its exporters had an advantage over rivals such as Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia, according to the Reuters news agency.
Other points of friction emerged.
Last week, US Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced that his department was suspending eight companies – including Indian IT giants Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro and HCL – from a labor certification system that is a key step for employers seeking green cards for their foreign staff.
Sameer Lalwani, a senior fellow at the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote this week that Indian public opinion toward the United States has reached an all-time high, citing U.S. involvement in Pakistan and the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which he said have pushed India to turn to Russian oil.
Despite this, he argued, defense and technology cooperation has gradually deepened and bilateral trade increased by nearly 12 percent in 2025 to nearly $240 billion.
According to him, “the perception of the political relationship has deteriorated more quickly than its strategic foundations”.
A sanctions law threatens to make the situation worse.
Last month, Trump signed the Lindsey O Graham Act Sanctioning Russia and Iran, which could impose tariffs of up to 100% on goods from the five largest importers of Russian oil or gas.
India, one of the world’s biggest buyers of Russian oil, had warned Washington that new tariffs could harm bilateral relations. Trump signed an executive order on Friday to lift sanctions as he tries to curb high oil prices ahead of the Nov. 3 U.S. election.
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